Police killed my son two weeks to his wedding – Mother

June 29 was a black day for Hajia Yalwa. That day marked the end of her frantic search for her 27-year-old son, Salisu Ahmadu, who has become a statistic in the tragic saga of extra-judicial killings that men of the Nigeria Police are notorious for.  Ahmadu allegedly was killed by a group of mobile policemen in Jos, the Plateau State capital sometime ago, but his body was not found, setting off months of frantic search. When Hajia Yalwa eventually saw her son’s remains on June 29, she could not hold back tears; she could not reconcile the loving son she knew with the corpse that lay oddly before her. The remains has series of injuries on his trunk and two bullet wounds in the head region. As she observed her dead son, she remembered that his wedding, which he had looked forward to, was only two weeks away.

Ahmadu was said to have met his death in the hands of mobile policemen who were drafted to enforce the state government’s law that prohibited Okada commercial motorcycle operation within Jos and Bukuru. The law came into effect in June this year. The enforcement of the law, which was stiffly resisted, resulted into confrontation between the police and youths.

Although Ahmadu, according to his mother, was not a commercial motorcyclist, he was nevertheless pursued by mobile policemen. Arrested and beaten, he was taken to the ‘C’ Division Police Station in Jos North.  He was not heard from, and his condition was not known, until June 29

Hajiya Yalwa, a resident of School Lane in Jos North local government area, told Weekly Trust that her son was on his way to Sarkin Mangu area, in the company of his friends when the incident happened. According to her, “he was on his way to office at Sarkin Mangu with friends Safiyanu Muhammad and Abubakar Shehu when mobile policemen attached to ‘C’ Division of the Nigerian Police chased them.”

She said “his friends escaped and hid somewhere, but Salisu was not so lucky; the policemen seized and started beating and kicking him. They forccefully took him into the premises of the ‘C’ Division and the since that time, he was not seen until when I found his corpse at the Plateau State Specialists Hospital.”

She said before she found her son’s corpse, she had on several occasions visited the ‘C’ Division to inquire on his whereabouts; no one would listen to her, and she made no headway.

“I went to the ‘C’ Division more that 15 times to inquire about my son, but I was snubbed by the DPO of the Division and his officers. I also visited the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID) but they all said they were not aware of his whereabouts.”

Concluding that her quest might not be fruitful there, Hajiya Yalwa decided to embark on a mortuary-to-mortuary search. She had a foreboding that he might be dead, and thought that his corpse could be in one of the mortuaries, where the many days of frantic search finally yielded the grim result.  “ I went to the Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH) but I did not see his corpse. It was when I went to the Plateau State Specialists Hospital that I found the corpse of my son in their morgue”.   

On inquiry there, she was told that Ahmadu’s corpse was taken there by a police officer who also left his name and mobile phone number.  “When I observed his lifeless body, I noticed there were bruises on his chest as well as two gunshot wounds in his body which resulted to his death.”

According to her, her son’s wedding was only two weeks away when the incident happened, and  the episode added to the trauma of the parents and his former in-laws to be.

According to Hajiya Yalwa, “my son was not even an Okada man; he was on his way to office at Sarkin Mangu when he was pursued and killed. To date, we don’t know he was killed; we want answers from the police.”

Alhaji Lawal Nabage, a community leader in the area also expressed displeasure with the way police personnel engage in extra judicial killings, and disclosed that they would petition the Inspector General of Police over Ahmadu’s killing.  “We will demand justice. It was remaining only two weeks for the boy to get married. All the time we had been looking for him, his obviously distraught bride-to-be was with us”.

Counsel to Hajiya Yalwa, Malam Ahmed S. Garba said they are going to petition the National Assembly over the matter, adding that “we are going to call on the National Assembly to embark on an inquiry into the series of extra judicious killings carried out by the mobile policemen who killed innocent people during the enforcement of the law banning Okada operation within Jos and Bukuru townships”.

According to him, extra judicial killings were becoming alarmingly rampant among police officers, stressing that the authorities must put a stop to it, especially where the practice is said to be prevalent in Jos North.

Meanwhile, Hajiya Yalwa was still struggling as at Thursday to claim the corpse of her son from the hospital for burial.

ASP Muhammed Lerama, Plateau State Police Public Relations’ Officer (PPRO) who would not comment on the matter said the command is not aware of such a thing.